Author Archives: shannon

Milestones and Job Offers

I turned down a really nice job offer the other night. An editor I know is looking to start his own small press and wanted me to have a key role in the operations, everything from editing to PR work.

I felt bad, but I had to turn him down.

It’s an issue of focus. My goal is to be the best writer I can be, and that doesn’t mean spending a lot of time reading other people’s slush, or going to events and being social. It means a lot of sitting in front of a keyboard and making stuff happen, usually not good stuff, but if you do enough and scrape off the bad, things start looking better.

Honestly, I have been wondering if small press is really the way to go. I used to think that they would be the next-generation gatekeepers, but from my experiences with a publisher, I wonder how many of them are really up to that role.

A weekend of peer review

No, I said PEER review

I spent most of this weekend reading for other people, something I enjoy doing and I’m getting better at.

The first thing on my  list was a short novel by Adam J Whitlatch, an expansion of his “Weller” short story. This is the 2nd full-length novel I’ve read for Adam. They’re both shaping up nicely.

The other piece is a 10,000 word sample from Catherine Schaff Stump who wrote a wonderful little book called Hulk Hercules Professional Wrestler. We are going to workshop one another’s pieces during Paradise ICON, a workshop which runs concurrent to my local Science Fiction convention.

Now, I just have to find time for my own work.

More cool stuff

I received my first 5-star review on Fangs from the very active reviewer Katy Sozaeva.

In full disclosure, I sent Katy a pre-release review copy of Fangs because she reads quickly, she gives thorough reviews, and she likes my work.

Honestly, just hearing someone likes my work as much as Katy does makes me giddy with excitement. When they actually write it down, I run around in circles until I get dizzy and fall down, hitting my head of the coffee table*.

 

* only metaphorically. I did not actually need medical attention.

Vampires are cool

If you look over the evolution of the vampire, you see an interesting phenomena. Over the years, the vampire has gone from the monstrous Nosferatu to the mysterious, tragic character of Count Dracula, to the homoerotic Louis and Lestat of Interview with the Vampire,to the sparkly teen heartthrob Edward Cullen.

Because of the adverse reaction to Twilight, it seems like a lot of people are writing off vampires lately. This is, of course, silly. There are still plenty of awesome vampires out there as long as they can keep it in their pants–yes, I’m looking at you, Laurell K Hamilton*.

Here’s the thing. I don’t really care. I liked vampires before Twilight. I liked vampires before Anne Rice’s vampires, and I will continue to like vampires. I will not grow tired of vampires, and I don’t care if a vampire book doesn’t “bring something new to the table,” as long as it makes with the fangs and the biting and the blood. Some people might say that’s a plebeian attitude. I say it’s a level of awesome they will just never understand.

* And seriously, LKH, you do know there are men out there packing less than 8 inches, don’t you? Don’t you?

The Dance of Joy

If you know what this is, we’re both getting old.

This writing gig can get you down. It means long hours or working the hardest you’ve ever worked for a net result of a paycheck which would make a WalMart greeter cry.

Still, I keep on, because I would go crazy if I didn’t. And if I can bring a little happiness into people’s lives, I’m making a difference. Still, there are some days when I get a little bummed out. Lately, I’ve been a little bummed out.

This morning, I woke up and found a new 5-star review on Amazon. It’s amazing how something so small makes all that work seem worth it.

Holdups

The good new is my new book now has a cover and and ISBN. The bad news is, due to a miscommunication, the back cover blurb got messed up and we had to pull it back from the printers. It will probably be another week.

Such is life.

On the bright side, I think my editor has the best of intentions and was trying to do good by me. He just has a lot of other stuff on his mind.

Trouble Starting

I’m doing what may be the final re-write of my book Panic No More, about Nick, the son of a formerly prominent family who is harassed by the Goat God.

I think this is my fifth re-write of this book, and part of the reason why I’ve never been satisfied with it is I never quite started it off right. I had lots of good ideas, but I could never quite nail down the first scene.

Then I had an epiphany. I was so worried about what other people would think of my beginning, I forgot to write what I wanted to write. I had done all the things that the books on writing tell you to do, but I wasn’t really happy with it myself.

I was trying to eliminate the long front porch and get quickly to the character interaction, and jump immediately into action, saving the backstory for later. And the more I did all of those things, the more I didn’t like it.

So, instead of jumping right into the action, I started over 150 years before the story starts. And I think it worked. I like it, at least. Here’s a taste:

In 1852, Nick’s Great-Great Grandfather Clayton Earl Baker moved from Philadelphia to Iowa and made his home in the newly-founded state capitol of Iowa City, which he believed would soon become the next gateway to the west, a bustling metropolis which would rival St. Louis in size. He was wrong, of course.

 

The capitol moved on in 1857, but by then Clayton had set down roots, sinking his entire fortune into a factory which produced his patented dental instruments and anesthetics, and building Baker House, an expansive Victorian home, which rivaled many eastern estates in its opulence if not its size.

I am writing again

Picture unrelated

On Sunday, I really wanted to write. I didn’t rush into it though. It had been a while, and I was afraid my juices might not be properly flowing. On the wisdom that sometimes the anticipation is more rewarding than the actual consummation, I purposefully did not write for most of the day.

I often fail at creative endeavors before noon anyway, being more of a night person.

I sat down in the early afternoon, and put finger to keyboard, only to have to spend the next forty minutes dealing with a broken printer and trying to figure out how to reset the default fonts in Scrivener, which I forget how to do every four weeks. After that, I spent twenty minutes having a mini-breakdown. Then I had a coffee.

For some reason, every time I sit down to write, I am nearly paralyzed with the worry that I will have somehow forgotten to write like I write, and will end of with a Dan Brown novel, or John Grisham, or someone who is simply not me.

Finally, I was ready to write, and, to my amazement, I seem to still be capable. I’ve been averaging 900 words a day ever since. This might not seem like a great deal, but, for me, it means as many cylinders are firing as are ever likely to.

The New Toaster

Many years ago, I bought a new toaster. It looked really cool in the store. It was round. You put the bread in diagonally. The bread was “caught” by an internal mechanism in the toaster and glided gracefully into the warming position without the need for unsightly levers. When I got in home, despite a good deal experimentation and my high hopes, I had to come to a conclusion:

My new toaster made crappy toast. It was always burned in one corner and not toasted at all on the opposite corner. Eventually, we threw it away.

The toaster we have now looks pretty much like the one I grew up with, only slightly larger to accomodate bagel halves. The controls are exactly the same, with the exception of a “bagel” button. Maybe toasters just don’t need that much improvement.

This is why I was intrigued by Apple’s decision to call its new iPad “The New iPad.” I feel like they’re admitting, given what people use tablets for right now, The New iPad won’t need much improvement. This kind of makes sense to me, as tablets are hermaphrodites–they aren’t phones, and they’re not laptops. They’re great for web-surfing and playing games, but I don’t see them moving out of that niche. Sure, new models will have a faster CPU or more storage, but there’s only so much you want to do with a 10″ tablet.

I believe we are seeing the same trend in laptop screens. For a while it seemed like 17″ or even 19″ would be typical sizes, but as the rest of laptop hardware is getting smaller and lighter, screens seem to be settling in at around 11″ to 15″. Sure, there are some outliers, like the HP HDx 20, with its 20″ display, and hardcore gamers want bigger screens, but it seems most consumers are looking for sleeker models.

My current laptop is solid state, except for two cooling fans and has pixels smaller than I can see. Writing this article takes 4% of the CPU and even though I’m lazy about closing windows, I am only using 1/2 of the RAM. Sure, a few terabytes of storage might be nice, but until we move beyond the paradigm of a windowing operating system, I don’t think I’ll really need more. Oh, and I wouldn’t mind a week or two of battery life and batteries which would last a decade.

I really hope that someday soon, the computer fulfills its destiny and joins the ranks of the toaster–an appliance you buy once, does everything you need, and it pretty much just works.